Drake sent pictures!!!

We just received an actual hand-written letter from Drake! (I should probably get used to calling him Elder Ranquist, but I don't know if that will ever happen) Though "real" letters are nice...Drake's handwriting takes skill to decipher, taking after his dad and grandpa.
As the letter is on paper and I don't feel like typing it all up (not to mention that my dad has it with him at the moment for a home teaching lesson-I'm guessing that his families are going to get to know Drake really well within the next two years) I will just type some excerpts from it and the previous letter which seems to never have been posted. I'm slacking on the job already, but hey, seminary, school, dance, youth group, piano,family and friends does not lead to a lot of leisure time.

so, for the excerpts from the emailed letter that I failed to post...

Dear Family,

This week has been a pretty good week...that is if I can remember exactly what happened. Time is so distorted here. I can't figure out when anything occurred. Like my companion said, "It feels like this morning was last week and last week was this morning."
We've pretty much completed working on lesson one, about God our Father, Prayer, prophets, Christ's ministry, restoration, and the Book of Mormon, this past week and now we are starting on the second lesson--the plan of salvation. Elder Born and I do a fairly good job of teaching together and switching off. And we do a good job of testifying and bringing in the Spirit. We were able to finally figure out how to teach the first lesson simply and easily with a lot of help and now we face the task of making the plan of salvation easy to understand. It is so easy to go too deep. But, we'll get it.

Then he lists the people who are leaving for their missions...if you want this just ask.
E. Martin is our district leader. He does a great job and works hard. He is from Canada.

I'll be back to finish my letter. I need to go put my laundry in the dryer. (yay! he is actually doing his own laundry!)
Sorry for the interruption. I'm back now.

E. Martin does a great job at being District leader. He has a lot of meetings and interviews he has to conduct. I feel sorry that he has to take aways so much Spanish study time to do that. We try to help out. E. Knight is of Mexican descent, but his parents didn't teach him Spanish, so he is often coming to me for help and translations. He's a nice guy. E. Hollinger is really quite quiet. But he still tries hard to be a good missionary.

Now to the Buenos Aires West Elders. E. Page and E. Bunn. Those two are interesting and fun. I'm not sure how well they would go with anyone else, but they sure do go very well with each other. They are constantly building off of each other's jokes. They also work hard and practice more than a lot of us. They aren't afraid at all to approach random people to practice contacts in Spanish. They're different, but great Elders.

Now for my roommates. We are also all going to Buenos Aires West. E. Chamberlain and E. Hinton. E. Chamberlain is the tallest in our district. In his pictures with his family, he's a head taller than them. He's a pretty easy going guy. E. Hinton is another one of the shy type, but still is confident in himself. I wish I knew more about them actually.

Then it is E. Born and me. We're still getting along really well. I'm still working on helping him focus more and he's working on me being able to approach others. Actually, we're trying to do that together. We know the doctrines. We can teach. But overcoming the desire to seclude ourselves with others, to approach others without hesitation is difficult. But we will do it.

I'm grateful for the examples of the Elders in my district and will miss the ones that are leaving.

I don't have much time left, but I want to describe the devotional yesterday. Elder Oaks came and spoke about the sacrament. His main focus was that we need to properly and worthily take the sacrament so that we can invoke the promise of always have the Spirit to be with us in our lives. That we should prepare for the sacrament through prayer each week. It was a really powerful talk. It wasn't long. He ended about 15 min. early, but he had the Spirit in that room. He listed a ton of scriptures, which by doing so will fill up a few of my personal study.

I have a testimony of the cleansing effect of the sacrament and that through those covenants we renew, we can have the Spirit. That we need to keep those sacrament prayers in our heart to always remember Him and keep His commandments. That is one of the sad things about missing or not attending church. You lose the cleanliness and thus the Spirit.

I know this work to be right. And I love you.

-Elder Ranquist


I have a feeling we're going to get a lot of testimonies out of Drake within the next couple of years...it'll be great!

okay, since this post is getting pretty long and my dad is still not back from Home Teaching, I'll wait to put up the written letter. Other than school related papers and letters to the "only broke up because I'm going on a mission" girlfriend(which apparently are much longer than the letters we receive-we can only guess whom he chooses to write to first) I'm not sure if Drake has written so much in his life.

and now for the pictures...maybe you can figure out which Elder is which from Drake's description in the previous letter. I can't...